| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
The theme seemed to be that Americans were stuffy and dull while Europeans were cultured and cosmopilitan. From what I have read of James, he preffered Europe to his native America. I am assuming i will find the same theme in other James works.
The prose is the thing -- James was dictating by this time (how on Earth does one dictate a novel?), and it shows. His chewy ruminations and meandering, endlessly parenthetical sentences are hard to digest. I think James went too far in his late style, and "The Ambassadors" might have benefited from a sterner editor. Still, this is an important book, absolutely worth the read.
Guess what. Strether likes it in Paris. He doesn't want to advise Chad to leave his French girlfriend. Waymarsh rats him out, and Strether is no longer a wealthy lady's fiancee.
So Mrs Newsome sends in the big guns - big Sarah Pocock and her pretty daughter Mamie, the bait. Wouldn't it be nice if Chad married Mamie and CAME HOME!
Will Sarah Pocock grab Chad by the ear and drag him home to marry her daughter? Will Sarah go wilding through Europe with Waymarsh? Will Strether marry Marie Gostrey, the woman who attached herself to him in Paris? Will Chad remain in Paris with his desperate but charming older woman, or will he return to New England to sell clocks? Will pretty Mamie Pocock fall for Chad or for Chad's friend Bilham? Is Bilham serious about Mamie or anyone else? Have you ever noticed the resemblance between classic literature and soap opera?
The biggest problem with this book, for me, is that all of the characters seem to have a vague, in-between-the-lines way of expressing themselves.
